


Hawk in the Dive

by Gileonnen



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Gen, Kel Jokes, M/M, Meeting the Family, Military Formations Used for Non-Military Purposes, Space Fighter Pilots, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 22:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12850419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: Did you hear about the Kel whose sister was a logger?Jedao meets Teshet's family and almost immediately embroils them in something questionably sensible and definitely illegal.





	Hawk in the Dive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



The damselfly ship sliced through the upper atmosphere so smoothly that even Jedao barely felt the friction of its passage. _Good,_ he thought. _The formation's holding._ Four ships was barely enough to sketch the Blade Through Water--but they were enough. A thin slipstream shell shielded the ship's hull, its edges picked out in blue-white fire. "Hold position," he called over the comms. "On my signal, fan out to Scythe Humbles the Mountain."

It was a formation meant to level fortifications. Probably not to win bets. Definitely not to win really stupid bets.

The moment of truth. Either this would be the kind of story that Teshet's family told with awe for the next few dozen years, or they'd be paste on the surface of a sticky jungle planet.

The ships burned down through the stratosphere, and the earth rose up to meet them. He eased off the void engines and brought his damselfly's shuddering atmospherics online.

The little craft vibrated ominously. He felt the insulation tearing a heartbeat before the readout registered it, a pulse of urgent red light--but the formation held, and so did his damselfly.

The planet filled his world from horizon to horizon. He could make out individual trees, individual fungal growths in the wet lowlands. He could see exactly where he would die, if the transition between formations was anything but flawless.

He did not plan to give in to oblivion today.

"Now," he said, and tipped up the nose of the damselfly.

The four of them snapped into Scythe Humbles the Mountain in perfect unison. They blistered over the treetops, so close that the shockwave of their passage carved a perfect swath through a few thousand shiplengths of forest. Behind them, trees shivered and fell. A scream of delight echoed over the comms, then an answering crow: "Now, _this_ is how you make a Kel joke!"

Jedao could almost hear Wyn Teshet rolling her eyes through the crackling comm chatter. "Fuck you, Rhi."

Warm laughter. "That's what I brought Jedao for. And he's all right at piloting, too."

"You owe us a whiskey," Jedao cut in before Rhi Teshet could implicate them any more deeply in a fraternization scandal.

"Fuck you, too, Jedao."

Teshet was the first to break formation, dropping from the level plane of scythe and looping back to the logging camp. His sister broke next, then her wife, and then Jedao last of all.

He skimmed over the shattered forest, watching birds rise in clouds of shifting red and green and blue. They darted over the carnage in dense, shifting clouds, rising and falling, constellating into unfamiliar shapes. No matter which formation they chose, though, the trees didn't rise again.

 _Formation instinct,_ thought Jedao as he brought the damselfly down in its docking bay. _No wonder our emblem is a bird._

He shook himself free of the analog helmet; his hair was plastered against his neck and brow. It had been a long time since he'd piloted a single-passenger craft, let alone one as ramshackle as the damselfly, and he only realized how tense his limbs were when he hauled himself out of the pilot's seat and onto the pavement. The jolt of impact ran from heel to shoulder, sharp and electric.

"Did you hear about the Kel whose sister was a logger?" Wyn Teshet's wife was saying. Her arm was draped around Wyn's broad shoulders and her helmet hanging from her hand by the strap. They looked right together, the both of them thick and solid and latticed with scars. "He was the first Kel arrested for war crimes against trees."

"You don't get to tell Kel jokes," Teshet said, laughing. "You'll get them wrong." His civvies suited him; the bright red fabric of his shirt brought out the gold of his mesh tattoo, the warm brown of his skin. Sweat stood out faintly on his neck, and Jedao wanted nothing more than to lick it clean.

Well. Time for that later.

"You probably have conferences on Kel jokes," said Wyn. "Seminars. Three-day training retreats."

"All true," said Jedao. "He's shown you the leatherbound books of Kel jokes, hasn't he?"

Wyn wrinkled her nose. "He's shown me a lot of things that were leatherbound, but none of them were books. Your boyfriend's a freak, Jedao. Sorry you had to hear it from me."

Teshet waggled his eyebrows. "He knows my proclivities intimately. Ask him sometime about goose fat, if you really want an education."

"The flight training was plenty of education for me. I know better than to go poking around my brother's porn collection again."

"You're sure you won't get in trouble for that? For showing us a couple of formations?" Wyn's wife looked from Jedao to Teshet. She'd almost pledged herself to the Andan, or so Wyn had mentioned last night over drinks, and she had to know what the price was for faction loyalty. She had to know the price of sharing secrets.

Jedao looked to Teshet, who shrugged as though to say, _You think I give a fuck about looking like a good Kel?_ They'd be reeducated if it got out that they'd done this--but they'd be reeducated if it got out that they were fucking, too. There were no small deviations from Doctrine. Before them lay a long, straight path, and to change their course even a little was to court a sudden, messy end.

Why not live a little, before the inevitable crash?

"I wouldn't pull this stunt again," he said after a moment. "If nothing else, if you missed the timing by even a hairsbreadth, you'd hit the ground like a bullet hitting a ripe gourd."

"Noted."

Jedao smiled. Someone had once called it his Shuos smile--it was the kind of smile that spoke of long games, of unseen pieces moving toward some hidden end. It had the rather fortunate side effect of ending uncomfortable conversations abruptly. "So now that we're done sharing military secrets with civilians, I believe you owe us some whiskey."

"After all," said Teshet, with a discreet pinch to Jedao's ass, "we're going to need a lot of inspiration to draft the best Kel joke of all time."

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken certain liberties with Teshet's family; namely, I have entirely invented them.


End file.
